NIC/ Ethernet

Hello!
Well, today there was a technical presentation by some students in my school so there was this discussion about NIC's. So somebody came up with a question that what's the difference between ethernet card and network interface card..! So that guy replied that ethernet card's different in sense that they have some better protocol and additional features as compared to NIC...
What I thought was that they were the same thing!! So is it actually different?

Although I use them interchangable my self the difference is simple : any computer peripherial which lets you connect to a physical network segment is a NIC (including fiber optic transceivers and hi-speed serial connections (no not COM1 ;) found on routers) yet ethernet is a OSI Layer 2 (Data Link Layer) standart which actually has nothing to do with OSI Layer 1 (physical layer) and which regulates the Layer 2 packet format, MAC addressing scheme, and CSMA/CD (carrier sense, multiple access, collision detection). You don't have to run ethernet on your NIC attached to your PC. You may very well run Token Ring or FDDI which also are OSI Layer 2 standarts of IEEE.

Hello!
Well, today there was a technical presentation by some students in my school so there was this discussion about NIC's. So somebody came up with a question that what's the difference between ethernet card and network interface card..! So that guy replied that ethernet card's different in sense that they have some better protocol and additional features as compared to NIC...
What I thought was that they were the same thing!! So is it actually different?

Hi,

I'm taking my Master study classes, and all I can tell about this is that ethernet cards are NICs. NIC is also the same as an adapter. NICs perform link layer services at layer 2 in the Internet protocol stack.

a NIC (network interface card) is any card that connects your computer to a network.
So an ethernet card is an example of a NIC, but a modem could be considered a NIC as well as a fiber optic NIC.
btw, to network 2 computers all you need is either a cross over cable (thats just one ethernet cable between the 2 PCs) or a HUB, which tends to b quite a bit cheaper than a router, as its a less complicated peice of hardware, but there would be no difference in performance for only 2 PCs.